Special Assignment (SABC) - 21 March 2006 - The Green Dam and other sories of the new poor whites

Special Assignment meets some of South Africa's new poor whites. Disillusioned, isolated and often ill-informed, they are struggling to understand why they lost their privileges and trying to make sense of the political changes that have swept the country.
Koos Mitton never had it easy. As a child, he sometimes had to eat rotten meat and mouldy bread from dust bins. As a poor white under the apartheid government, Koos's skin colour was supposed to get him benefits like free education, protected jobs and council housing. The system should, in fact, have propelled Koos from poverty to at least middle class comfort.
It never did. Like many others of a new generation of poor whites, Koos could never escape the poverty cycle. And with the demise of the apartheid government and all its support systems, more and more whites are squatting or living in squalor, struggling to adapt to a changing South Africa. According to some estimates, one in four whites now earns less than R1 500 per month and is regarded as poor. Figures show that wealthy white South Africans are getting richer by the day, but that the gap between wealthy whites and poor whites is, in fact, the fastest growing divide in the country